


Trouble Me

by idyll



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-06
Updated: 2006-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:37:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"They don't understand and they <i>shouldn't</i>. Not entirely. That's what you're there for."</i> Tag for Misbegotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trouble Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ladycat777 (Ladycat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/gifts).



When they were being debriefed on earth, after the _Daedelus_ saved their asses from the Wraith at the end of that first year on Atlantis, General O'Neill had sat down across from John in the mess hall and said, "Command is distancing."

John looked up from his lunch and it took him a moment to shift his thoughts from the vagaries of mystery meat to the totally random and abrupt conversational starter.

"Yes, sir, it is," John said when he'd processed the general's words and had his attempt at a salute lazily waved away.

"It's not always that way, though. Sometimes it's close and ugly, and that's worse." O'Neill had poked at the condiments on the table, arranging them in descending size order with a great deal of attention. "They don't understand and they _shouldn't_. Not entirely. That's what you're there for."

John kept his face blank and stared at the pile of mashed potatoes on his plate which, when he tilted his head to the side, looked kinda like George Washington, and he didn't think too hard about civilians and their sheltered worldview just then because that was better left for when he was alone.

"The thing is," O'Neill continued just as John was using his fork to shape a mashed potato and gravy volcano. "Those civilians of yours are going to think all sorts of things about you as you go on, but you can't let that matter to you or let it affect your decisions."

John swallowed past a dry throat and managed to acknowledge O'Neill's words with a sharp nod of his head.

Then the general just _looked_ at him for something like a minute straight, which doesn't sound like a long time in theory, but is really kind of about fifty-nine seconds past comfortable in reality, before saying, "Oh, and that thing where you directly challenge Elizabeth's authority and make her the bad guy? Knock that off."

"Right," John said, wincing slightly and fighting back the urge to point out that it'd only been the once, twice at the most.

The whole thing took about three minutes total and John knows that if it had gone differently then he wouldn't be a Lieutenant Colonel and he damn well wouldn't be Atlantis' military commander, no matter who Elizabeth browbeat.

*

"I don't know. Perhaps."

John slouches further back in his seat in front of Elizabeth's desk and looks at her. "If we'd gotten communications online, I would have radioed in that the situation was critical and we had to detonate the failsafe." He arranges his features in an expression of disbelief and skepticism. "Do you really think you would have come up with an alternate plan in the thirty seconds we had to decide?"

The corners of Elizabeth's mouth tighten. "When you put it that way, no."

"There, see."

"You make it sound simple."

Even though John's tempted, he doesn't say, "You didn't sound so torn when I pushed a button and killed fifty-five Genii, who may have been bottom feeding sons of bitches but were _actually_ human."

Instead he says, "It's war, Elizabeth; nothing's simple" because no matter how unflinching and hard-as-nails she makes herself out to be for the IOA, she's not ready for the truth, which is that it's even simpler than it sounds.

*

John doesn't go looking for Beckett. In fact, he stays as far away from the infirmary and medical research labs as he can, going so far to take the long way from the control room to the mess hall, which requires him to change transporters twice.

But Beckett comes looking for him and John can't really do what he wants, which is to stand up and walk away the second Beckett sits across from him in the mess, posture slumped, eyes shadowed.

"I'm a doctor," Beckett says and his voice is tired and uncertain, like he doesn't know what that means anymore in the grand scheme of things.

"I'm the military commander of Atlantis," John says with a shrug. "It was my call. It was always going to be my call."

The mixture of guilt and relief that crosses Beckett's face kills John's appetite and he pushes his tray aside.

*

Rodney comes to John's room in the middle of the night and asks him, halting and confused, "How do you--that is--when you--is it?"

John's more surprised by this than by anything else surrounding this latest clusterfuck of supposedly gray areas of wartime decisions.

Because the thing about Rodney is that he doesn't do well with things that have no correct answers, no definitive rules to follow. He always hovers in the background in the moment, lost and confused amid a morass of shifting lines and erratic boundaries that are chaotic until later, when hindsight kicks in and makes everything seem like it was straightforward the whole time.

Just imagining Rodney trying to broach the subject in detail makes John's teeth clench and he stares at Rodney until the other man is fidgeting awkwardly.

The other thing about Rodney, though, is that he takes tenacity to a whole new annoying level sometimes, and John knows that this will be one of those times. John figures he can keep quiet now, deal with weeks of Rodney poking at him, and give in later, or just give in now and be done with it. He sucks in a breath and lets his face go blank, and he gives Rodney what he won't give Elizabeth and Beckett.

"I don't look back," John says flatly. "I make the call in the moment and it doesn't keep me up at night and I don't have nightmares, because my job here is to do what has to be done. That's how it works, Rodney."

"Oh," Rodney says and his voice rises and falls within that one syllable. He tilts his head to the side, eyes going distant and focused at the same time, and John wonders where his words are taking Rodney. "I see," Rodney murmurs and John braces himself because this is Rodney and sometimes he pushes John about things he shouldn't. "Thank you, then."

John blinks, opens his mouth, blinks again, and closes his mouth. "Wait. What?"

Rodney lifts his chin and clears his throat. "Thank you for doing that for us, Colonel."

This isn't at all what John would have expected if he'd ever considered getting into this with Rodney and he isn't sure how to respond, so they stand there in tense silence that gets tenser and more uncomfortable with each second.

"Um," John finally ventures and the stupidity of that is apparently enough to restore Rodney's equilibrium: he rolls his eyes and snorts, relaxing from the rigid, defensive stance he adopted when he stepped inside.

"Your eloquence is astounding," Rodney says with mock awe, and John flips him off.

"Is there anything else?" John asks because his own equilibrium returned along with Rodney's. "It's _late_ and I'm _tired_ and I need to take my boots _off_."

"No. Yes. Wait." John rolls his eyes and Rodney moves forward and leans down. The kiss is hard, forceful, and Rodney cradles the back of John's skull in one large palm, fingers digging into his scalp. "Just that," he says when he pulls back, and John's once again at a loss for a response.

He settles for tugging Rodney to the bed, and they sit next to each other and pull off their boots, strip down to their boxers, and then John shuts down his laptop and turns off the lights while Rodney goes through his nightly "punch and rearrange the pillows until they are _just right_ and will not misalign his spine as he sleeps" routine.

John slips in beside him when he's done, and in the dark John reaches up and fists a hand around his dog tags.

"I don't think that's all there is to it," Rodney says suddenly and John sighs. "I mean, okay, so it doesn't keep you up at night, you're not a tortured mess of man." John's eyes have adjusted enough that he can see Rodney's hands cut through the air, managing to convey both dismissal and disdain with the shadowy gestures. "But I think it had to cost you something to get to that point."

John's hand tightens hard enough around his tags that he knows they're leaving impressions on his flesh, backwards letters and numbers, reversed words, his identity altered in the transference.

"Yeah, it did," he says awkwardly and he squeezes his eyes shut and prays that Rodney won't do something stupid like say he's sorry, as if John regrets the cost. Because he doesn't, not when it keeps Elizabeth, Carson and even Rodney from having to pay it.

"What was it?"

"I--I'm not sure," John answers tightly. It happened so long ago and he's just kept moving forward, has never looked back, and he honestly has no goddamn idea what he left behind along the way. "Whatever it was, I'd pay it again, you know?"

"Yeah," Rodney says so quietly that John barely hears him.

"What if it--" John cuts himself off, takes a breath, and tries again. "Do you think it was something, you know, important?"

"No," Rodney answers after a pause. He turns on his side and presses his face into the side of John's neck. "Not at all important."

Despite the ringing certainty in Rodney's voice, John doesn't think Rodney can know that for sure, and he suspects that maybe Rodney would lie to him if he knew otherwise, but John doesn't regret the cost and he'd pay it again, and maybe that _makes_ it unimportant.

Against his neck, Rodney's breathing is evening out and John imagines that Elizabeth and Carson are also slowly slipping towards sleep in their respective beds, and that's mostly all that John asks for at the end of a day on Atlantis, in the Pegasus Galaxy.

He uncurls his fist, one finger at a time, so that his tags drop onto his chest with a _clink_, and he closes his eyes and slips away, too.

*  
.End


End file.
